OpenWHO online course enrollments surge over 4000% in just over 2.5 years

14 / 08 / 2022

By Marwa Nassar - -

Enrollments for the World Health Organization’s OpenWHO online learning course have surged more than 4000% percent in just over 2.5 years, increasing from 160 000 in January 2020 to 7 million in August 2022.

The record-setting participation comes as health emergencies continue to affect communities across the globe, generating demand for trusted and accessible public health knowledge.

The OpenWHO platform hosts courses on 165 public health topics, including training to support the response to outbreaks like the COVID-19 pandemic, monkeypox, polio, cholera, Marburg virus disease and plague, as well as for ongoing events like food insecurity and the crisis in Ukraine.

Courses are available in 65 languages – most recently adding Georgian to the offering – so that communities can access life-saving public health information in their native languages, making it easier to understand. This includes the 15 most commonly spoken languages worldwide and the official languages of 44 out of 46 of the least-developed countries.

More than 3.7 million course certificates have been issued to OpenWHO learners, who have shared more than 50 000 digital badges on social media to celebrate their achievements.

“We want to make it as easy as possible for people across the world to access the trusted, science-based public health information that they need,” said Heini Utunen, acting Head of the WHO Health Emergencies Program’s Learning and Capacity Development Unit, which manages the OpenWHO platform. “Equity is the cornerstone of our learning response to health emergencies.”

OpenWHO’s global community of learners recently shared examples of how they have benefited from the learning platform at an open webinar celebrating OpenWHO’s 5th anniversary.